page_title: Merengue music
section_title: Rhythm
hierarchical_section_title: Merengue music / Musical style / Rhythm
caption_attribution_description: A couple dance to the band Merengada at London's South Bank.
context_page_description: Merengue is a type of music and dance originating in the Dominican Republic, which has become a very popular genre throughout Latin America, and also in several major cities in the United States with Afro-Latino communities.
  Merengue developed as a music circa the middle of the 19th century of Central African particularly Congo stylistic origins and has evolved and reached many different markets since. The genre was later promoted even more by Rafael Trujillo, the dictator from 1930 to 1961, who turned it into national music and dance style of the Dominican Republic. In the United States it was first popularized by New York-based groups and bandleaders like Rafael Petiton Guzman, beginning in the 1930s, and Angel Viloria y su Conjunto Típico Cibaeño in the 1950s. It was during the Trujillo era that the merengue "Compadre Pedro Juan", by Luis Alberti, became an international hit and standardized the 2-part form of the merengue. Merengue music was inscribed by UNESCO on the list of Intangible Cultural Heritage of humanity
context_section_description: Merengues are fast arrangements with a  beat. The traditional instrumentation for a conjunto típico (traditional band), the usual performing group of folk merengue, is a diatonic accordion, a two–sided drum, called a tambora, held on the lap, and a güira. A güira is a percussion instrument that sounds like a maraca. It is a sheet of metal with small bumps on it (created with hammer and nail), shaped into a cylinder, and played with a stiff brush. The güira is brushed steadily on the downbeat with a "and-a" thrown in at certain points, or played in more complex patterns that generally mark the time. Caballito rhythm, or a quarter and two eighths, is also common. The double headed drum is played on one side with a stick syncopation and on the other side with the palm of the hand.
  The traditional (some say fundamental) signature rhythm figure of merengue is the quintillo, which is essentially a syncopated motif whose pattern is broken by five successive drumhead hits at the transition between every second and third beat, alternating between the hand and the stick. To purists, a merengue without quintillo is not truly a merengue, a viewpoint that has gradually disappeared as other alternate figures are used more frequently (as the one traditionally called jaleo, also known as merengue bomba, wrongly identified as a mixture of merengue and Puerto Rican bomba music, and which actually also has its roots in traditional merengue).
  Three main types of merengue are played in the Dominican Republic today. Merengue típico, which is usually called perico ripiao, is the oldest style commonly played. In English perico ripiao means "ripped parrot", which suggests controversy but which is said to be the name of a brothel where the music was originally played. The other two types are merengue de orquesta (big band merengue) and merengue de guitarra (guitar merengue).
caption: Merengue dance
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